April 5, 2012

At first, I thought this legislation was a bad idea. After all, it will certainly make it more expensive to operate a food truck. The bill would require every food truck (and restaurants and warehouses that store food truck supplies) to pay $100 each year to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.

Costs associated with complying with the proposed licensing law could result in some food trucks closing or increasing their prices. Some would-be food truck entrepreneurs may even be discouraged from ever trying to open a food truck company in Missouri.

This law would also require food truck operators to list, on their applications, the location of all warehouses or restaurants that supply their food and where they repair and store their food trucks. Perhaps some restaurant owners or food truck operators who have the right connections could get a sense of how best to undercut their competition with this information.

Food truck operators would even have to make sure that records of the “specific locations of the specific itineraries” for the food trucks are readily available for inspection. Could food trucks that announce their lunchtime locations, like @PiTruckSTL, @falafelwich, and @whereschacha, submit those tweets as the required “itineraries”?

Department inspectors could have access to Pi Pizza, Falafelwich, Cha Cha Tacos, and a litany other of food trucks as often as “necessary.” They might be able to participate in ridealongs if they demand to have access to the interior of a food truck while it drives.

You know, this legislation does not sound so bad. Where do I sign up to be an inspector?

It sure sounds like this is a poorly thought out attempt to bring in tax dollars and grow the size of the local government at the expense of entrepreneurs. I believe this will restrict the local economy in many ways by discouraging new food trucks and raising the bar for existing trucks. I wish the motivation behind this was based upon statistics and science or a belief in protecting the public health but that doesn’t appear to be the motivation. It is strange.